With a semi-rotated squad traveling to a difficult venue three days ahead of a derby clash vs. FC Dallas, Austin FC not only continued their white-hot road form on Saturday night. They made it look devastatingly easy in a 3-0 victory over Atlanta United at Mercedes-Benz Stadium that should silence any remaining doubters of Los Verdes' contender status.
Felipe and Ethan Finlay scored early, and Sebastian Driussi added his team-leading 11th of the season off the bench as Austin thoroughly dominated from start to finish in a result that keeps them within two points of Supporters' Shield leaders LAFC.
Even while attempting to pump the brakes, manager Josh Wolff had to admit his team's MLS-leading seventh away win and fourth consecutively was a head-turner.
“To do it four times in a row, and again our seventh win this year on the road, speaks volumes for this group, it really does,” Wolff said afterward. “And the level of character and execution and commitment and character that’s on display often. Tonight is probably for me one of the most telling games I’ve been a part of on the road with this group.”
With 15 league games left, Austin have 37 points and have already cleared their total from their expansion 2021 campaign by six points. They're about 75% of the way to the unofficial 50-point threshold that typically guarantees an Audi MLS Cup Playoffs place.
Their résumé includes a convincing 2-1 victory at LAFC back on May 18, and they'll get another litmus test against Black & Gold stars like Carlos Vela, Gareth Bale and more on Aug. 26 at Q2 Stadium. Nine of their remaining 15 fixtures are at home.
It's only natural now to begin thinking just how much damage this second-year club could do should they stay on course to reach their first postseason. Just don't tell Wolff or his charges that.
"The playoffs are a long ways away," Wolff said. "We want to keep growing. I think this performance, I think solidifies and validates the work that we’ve been doing all year. And it validates the work that we put in place last year. We’ve got to keep searching for performances like tonight, home and away."
Felipe has been through those wars. And while he's typically a depth piece on this Austin side, he's played in the league long enough and for enough different clubs that he's aware of nearly everything that can happen.
“We can’t think about the Supporters’ Shield, because there’s 15, 16 games to play,” said Felipe, who won the regular-season trophy with the New York Red Bulls in 2015. “So it’s a lot of points, a lot of games, a lot of tough times and in MLS anything can happen.”
Perhaps Exhibit A for Felipe's point was Saturday's opponents.
Atlanta exploded into MLS during their first two seasons under manager Tata Martino, culminating with winning MLS Cup 2018 – and the sense was that was only the beginning.
Four years later, they’re 11th in the Eastern Conference standings, three years removed from their last major trophy and, in Week 19, were thoroughly outplayed by a team that began 2022 on few observers' MLS Cup radar.
“It used to be impossible to come here and get a result, and you don’t see results like this very often,” Wolff said. “Our best win to date? I don’t know, we’ve had some good ones. But this is a memorable one, certainly. At the Benz winning 3-0 is something we should all be proud of."
